Under the Cactus Flag a Story of Life in Mexico

Excerpt from Under the Cactus Flag a Story of Life in Mexico
In the quiet town of Corona, far to the south of the great western State that basks along the warm Pacific shores, lived little Mary Annesley. She was barely sixteen when this chapter of her story opens, and whatever might have been said of her afterwards, she would scarcely at that time have been selected as a heroine of romance.
Her tresses, when unbound, lacked much of sweeping the ground; her eyes were not of the kind that dazzle the beholder with their brilliancy; nobody had yet likened the pose of her figure to the sway of a lily on its stalk, and her entrance into crowded assemblies had never, so far, provoked general murmurs of admiration.